From Zombos' Closet

What Lives On Zoc's Desk!

As I sit at my cluttered desk in the attic, pining away with the summer doldrums, pondering my next review, my next missive, my next revelation, and even my next fluffy piece of reading-candy, it suddenly struck me: why not highlight the many and varied things that live and breathe--metaphorically--on my desk?

There is always something interesting here, patiently waiting for my attention, or glaring back at me in accusatory silence due to the lack of it. Whether hiding under piles of DVDs, or books, or magazines, whether there for inspiration or tethering to my memories and responsibilities, my desk--anyone's desk for that matter--is a life-equation summed to its rectangular, oblong, or boxy measurements. So let's see what's interesting today, shall we?

They're Tearing Down My Coney Island

I don't know why I'm crying, but I am. I don't know why there's a lump in my throat, but there is. Astroland is closing. They're shutting down Deno's Wonder Wheel Park. They're tearing down my Coney Island, the one seen in fading Polaroid and Kodachrome snapshots blurring into history, and watched on YouTube snapcasts pidgeonholed into two-minute slices for quick viewing. My tawdry, unattractive Coney Island will be replaced by the upscale, condo-dwelling, MP3-swilling crowd, which quantifies, properly socializes, and neatly categorizes everything into discrete gigabytes of wholesome 0s and 1s on their thumbdrives.

Press start. Hit play.

In our digitized and homogenized world is analog entertainment inconvenient? Entertainment which hasn't been iPodded, or frontal corporatomized, or discretely measured into binary drips repeatedly delivered through popular media and fat business: who still wants it? Entertainment with tattoos flaring, piercings gleaming, and inner voices speaking first, inner ears listening last: why not open a mall instead? The not so pretty entertainment best enjoyed in ill-fitting clothes and loose bodies summed into fractions instead of rounded numbers: what, no Starbucks? Coney Island's skewed amusements have sidestepped the ubiquitous, commercialized, lockstep entertainment formulas medicating us through every day until now. But its time has run out.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm out of touch and all's right with the world. Or maybe, just maybe, the closing of this historic amusement park, this last bastion of hucksterism and questionable rides, of piss-smelling walkways, seedy denizens, and plastic trinkets--maybe this is the death knell for the gritty, indiscreet, and impertinent analog amusements unfit for our digital consumption. You know, the fun stuff not approved, not sanitized, not reamed out to hell by our wannabe clean-cut, moral-spewing but not doing culture?

When the real Coney Island closes forever, where will Deno's Wonder Wheel Park and it's over fifty Spook-A-Rama, "the world's longest spook ride" go? Okay, well, sort of; it was the longest ride if you counted in the interminable twisting and turning of the Pretzel rotating car as you traversed a narrow outside courtyard, between the darkness of the two buildings once used to contain the myriad terrors popping up at you.

In an almost forgotten summer, in a long ago year, the kid I was got the joke. Before I could inhale my first gasp of disgust at the yucky "spiderwebs" touching my head in the brief, utter blackness of building one (how long had those strings hung in the dank, musty air?), I was flung into the bright sunlit courtyard to make my lengthy--and very uneventful--journey toward building two where the real horrors waited. Most of the ten-minute ride was spent in that courtyard, whirring around the track, looking at fake plants with signs that read "poisonous." In-between the hissing sounds of compressed air escaping, unoiled machinery screeching, and quivering soundtracks, I swear I could hear William Castle chuckling in the dark of the second building when I finally got to it.

But I took this mindshot long ago, well before building one was torn down and the courtyard track dug up, replaced by more--better--money-making concessions; well before the lurid outside facade of fading, peeling-paint monstrosities was replaced with more innocuous figures of Laurel and Hardy, and Disneyized pirates, banishing the leering, bug-eyed gargoyles, spookshow skulls, and pitchfork-wielding devils to limbo. The salty air hastened decay and ever-increasing safety codes did the rest; little remains of the original grotesqueries quickly flashing by in the darkness; but still they scream for life beyond YouTube and Twitter.

Although many of the original displays have been replaced, either through deterioration or the need to upgrade to current safety codes, Spook-A-Rama has accumulated one of the most eclectic collections of stunts to be found in any dark ride. Some were built on the premises when the ride was new; some are from long-gone manufacturers such as Bill Tracy and Animated Display Creators; others are from newer current studios like Distortions Unlimited, Halloween Productions and Screamers; and many are of unknown origin. Still others were acquired from neighboring Coney Island rides that had closed, such as Tunnel Of Laffs and Dragon's Cave, as well as the aforementioned 'Hell 'N Back' Tracy-furnished ride at Rockaway.--Bill Luca, www.laffinthedark.com

Pause.

Astroland, the "space-age" theme park's lease on life has expired, too. I was there in 1962 when it opened. I won't be there when it closes after this one last season. Many dark rides have come and gone, but Dante's Inferno is still there. Sure, it's changed, but haven't we all? Its original theme, Dante's Divine Comedy, no longer applies, instead replaced by a hodgepodge of stunts (lingo for the creepy, often cheesy, tableaus) walled behind glass, safely distancing you from the scares, keeping the improper terrors properly out of reach. Nothing here lunges at you or threatens you. Like most digital entertainment: you just watch. Aside from a circular saw dismemberment, most of the terror comes from twirling around in the dark, strobe lights, and waiting for the next stunt. Unlike the denatured facade of Spook-A-Rama, Dante's Inferno still has skeletons and a pitchfork-wielding devil clutching a victim. Being portable, maybe the ride will find a new home elsewhere.

Slow-reverse. Play.

Take a deep breadth of air from the Coney Island boardwalk. Do you smell it? Deep-fried and crispy-brown it comes, heavy with salty, peppery heat, topped with sugary-sweet dripping ice cream cones, mingling with the odors of sun-bleached wood dried out by wind-blown sand and etched by the thousands of footsteps mashing thousands of potato knishes, squishing millions of hot dogs, kindling endless romantic dreams and littering Coney Island whitefish across many long-gone summers stretched end-to-end.

What will happen to the boardwalk when the condos come, and the shopping malls, and the theaters? Where will Sideshows by the Seashore be, the last place where you can experience unusual, analog performers with their imperfect bodies, undulating Ray Bradbury tattoo illustrations, gasoline-thirsty throats, bizarre feats no one else dares to do, and physical triumphs no one else has been cursed and gifted with, showing all off in a genuine, traditional ten-in-one circus sideshow? Where will Satina the snake charmer slither to, or Otis Jordan, the frog boy, roll and light a cigarette with his lips, or Zenobia, the bearded lady, give it a good tug, or Helen Melon, who is "so big and so fat that it takes four men to hug her and a boxcar to lug her!" be hugged? What place for them in our digital age of bodily perfection and propriety? YouTube? No. You can't take the hammer to pound that way-too-long nail into the Human Blockhead like I did on a stifling summer day. You can't touch Satina's way-too-big snake, either, or smell the alcohol swabs as the Human Pincushion sticks needles into his bare flesh.

Fast-forward. Stop.

One last breadth, one last ride. Coney Island's ghosts, Astroland, and Deno's Wonder Wheel Park will depart at the end of the 2008 season. Dreams, imagined futures, and forgotten pasts to follow. But, hey, just catch them all on YouTube. 

LOTT D Roundtable: Torture Porn in Horror Today

Cinema tends to reflect either the banality, the sanctity, or the immorality of our times, and patrons of movies promote the ones they like most by buying more theater tickets, more DVDs, and more Netflix rentals for them. The popularity of a movie will invariably foster more movies with similar storylines, similar characters and action themes, and as many sequels as an audience's attention span will allow. In a word, profit drives the creative ups and downs of cinema. From the independent to the mainstream, whether grindhouse or arthouse, the bottom line accounts for most of what we see and hear in the darkened theaters of Cannes, Sheboygan, and points in-between.

With movies affected by the vagaries of social and commercial forces, how do you explain the cross-genre use of torture porn in films like The Passion of the Christ, Saw, Hostel, Wolf Creek, Irreversible? Or even it's lesser use in television shows like Battlestar Galactica or 24? How do you justify the extended, agonizing, and too-graphic torture of a human being (or human-like being), who is humiliated and vivisected emotionally, spiritually, and physically? Is it a necessary component for high drama, or just a bottom-line feeder? And what does it say about us, the audience, promoting such movies like Saw every Halloween, forcing each sequel to become a more creative evisceration bloodbath?

The horror-blogging members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers give their take on torture porn. One word of advice: this is not a fluff piece of transient newsy gossip, or Twitter-sized comments of self-importance. Brew a nice cup of tana tea and butter your brain on both sides before you begin. Now get nice and comfortable. Ready? Let's begin.

Movie Review: Night of the Demon (1957) It's Coming for You!

Zombos Says: Excellent

So...this guy, Hal Chester, messed up the screenplay quite a bit. It was so good, the screenplay, that it couldn't be completely destroyed, only half destroyed. It's still considered a good movie. I think the job Jacques Tourneur did with what Hal Chester gave him was awfully good. Hal Chester, as far as I'm concerned, if he walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead. (Charles Bennett, quoted in Backstory 1: Interviews with Screenwriter's of Hollywood's Golden Age)

 

It's funny how the same mainstream script-to-screen development journey is undertaken again and again: script gets written, then gets rewritten by Hollywood-type (sometimes plural) who sticks his or her two cents in while pinching every other penny out of production, usually creating a penny-wise but pound foolish cinematic disappointment.

In the case of one film, Night of the Demon (or the shortened version, Curse of the Demon, for the United States), the script actually survives "improvements" by said Hollywood-type—Hal E. Chester—and the vexing Bureau of British Film Censors, to become an effective supernatural chiller in spite of the Woolworth's bargain basement special effects involving a beautiful-in concept, godawful in execution, puppet demon, and bad-boy drinking habits of one American actor determined to climb inside an empty bottle of booze head first. Of all the remakes, reworks, and re-imagines circulating Hollywood these days, this little cult gem of supernatural horror really deserves renewed attention.

But did Hal E. Chester or the censors really hurt the film?

Or did they inadvertently help polish it into a tidy, tension-mounting story showing how psychologist and paranormal debunker John Holden steps into it, only to realize what's sticking to his shoe is real and hairy and cannot be rationally explained away by science?

That the traditionally structured Night of the Demon was produced at all is surprising. Hammer Films, at the same time, was moving away from the don't show, just hint intentional ambiguity of Jacques Tourneur's noir terrors in favor of the brighter, bloodier, mush your face in it gasps of Curse of Frankenstein, which was not ambiguous at all. When Night was released in America it was even double-billed with Terrence Fischer's Revenge of Frankenstein, providing audiences with quite the Mutt and Jeff of horror opposites in visual and intellectual involvement, but keeping one similarity: neither movie was ambiguous.

Contrary to Jacques Tourneur's preference for implicative events and obfuscating shadows to force uncertainty of what's really happening and a did-I-see-what-I-just-saw? feeling, there is no doubt whatsoever a fire demon is coming to horribly mangle one, very skeptical, Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) for daring to expose devil-cult leader—and part-time children's magician—Karswell (Niall MacGinnis).

Within the opening minutes we race along with Harrington, the doomed predecessor to Holden, as he frantically tries to undo the curse brought about by the passing of a slip of paper to him, written with Runic symbols, marking him for gruesome death. We are introduced to the power Karswell wields and, in no uncertain terms, the reality of the fire demon summoned by his command. To Harrington's horror it first appears as twinkling lights, then emerges from an eerie unfolding cloud of smoke among the trees to be seen—by us—as a poorly executed puppet that looks like it's pedaling on a bicycle toward him (but is actually being pulled on a dolly toward the camera).

Composer Clifton Parker's otherwise effective scoring is compromised here by a rapidly repeating screech, sounding much like squeaking bicycle wheels going round and round (similar to the sound the giant ants make in Them!), unintentionally reinforcing the demon-on-a-bike impression. But it's the building tension in Tourneur's deft direction that surmounts this less than stellar physical effect, while the jarring rough cut close-up of the demon's ghastly face (added when Tourneur wasn't looking, I'm sure since he would have none of that), creates the defining monster image that lingers in the mind long afterwards.

Based on M.R. James's short story, Casting the Runes, screenwriters Charles Bennett, Cy Endfield, and Hal E. Chester (co-producer of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms), expand the story using the "magic 3 + R" of scriptwriting: nasty powerful villain, naive male and smart female, and add dash of unlikely romance between them. It was Chester who insisted on showing the monster much more than Tourneur intended, in hopes of attracting an American audience (I know, shame on us for being so demanding, even then).

While Tourneur wanted to create a psychological thriller similar to his Cat People, Chester wanted no doubt in the audience's mind of the terror coming by night. Between the two, the story becomes a supernatural version of 1949's noir D.O.A; although here it's dead-man-walking Holden's growing realization he's been marked for death propelling the story forward. By eliminating any doubt the threat is real, we know Holden is in danger: but will he realize it? Will his growing suspicion that sometimes a monster is just a monster, and not a figment of a superstitious imagination or autosuggestion, galvanize him to action? In this respect, Chester's Night is truer to James' story than Tourneur would have made it.

Karswell is not all that nasty, either.

In James' story, Karswell is evil through and through, but in Night, Karswell has his softer side (he gives a children's magic show each Halloween). He is also secretly fearful. In a revealing speech, unwisely cut from the American version, he chastises his kindly mother for not realizing the predicament he's in:

 

Karswell-
You get nothing for nothing. Listen, mother. You believe in the supernatural. I've shown you some of its power and some of its danger.

Mrs. Karswell-

Yes, Julian.

Karswell-

Well, believe this also. You get nothing for nothing. This house, the land, the way we live. Nothing for nothing. My followers who pay for this do it out of fear. And I do what I do out of fear also. It's part of the price.

Mrs. Karswell-

But if it makes you unhappy. Stop it. Give it back.

Karswell-

How can you give back life? I can't stop it. I can't give it back. I can't let anyone destroy this thing. I must protect myself. Because if it's not someone else's life, it'll be mine. Do you understand, mother? It'll be mine.

 

This mum and son chat reveals how much he's stepped in it, too, but willingly, unlike Holden. Under that calm and commanding veneer lies a man trapped into doing what he must to keep from being stepped on by something far nastier and even more powerful.

And that something is coming closer and closer toward Holden every day. After Karswell surreptitiously passes along the Runic spell, Holden starts feeling cold all the time, keeps hearing an odd and mournful tune playing in his head, and smokes and drinks like a fish while Harrington's niece, Joanna (Peggy Cummins), berates him for being such a non-believing, smug, chowder-head. She knows how and why her uncle died from reading his journal, and now she's trying to save Holden from the same fate before it's too late. Even Mrs. Karswell, against her son's will, wants to help.

In what some critics consider a weakening sidestep from the mounting tension, she has Joanna bring Holden to a seance she's arranged. The incredulous psychologist reluctantly joins the proceedings as the medium, Mr. Meek (Reginald Beckwith), humorously channels his spirit guides until he is taken over by Joanna's uncle. Harrington's voice, frantically warning of the coming danger, ending in a shriek of fear as he relives the night of the demon attack "It's in the trees! It's coming!" Holden, not impressed by the proceedings, ignores the warning; but uneasiness is beginning to chink his scientific armor more and more.

Tourneur turns down the light and lengthens the shadows for the revelation of the little slip of paper in Holden's possession, exactly as Harrington describes it in his journal. Is it the wind from an open window that whips the paper from Holden's hands and sends it flying toward the fire on the hearth, only to be stopped from bursting into flame by the ember screen? Or does it have a life of its own and desperately tries to reach the fire, even after he closes the window?

Joanna insists it's alive and is trying to seal his fate by burning, but Holden tells her it's the draft going up the chimney keeping it tight against the screen; but as he says that it suddenly drops motionless to the floor, draft or not. "What made it stop?" asks Joanna. "I don't know," says Holden, deep in thought, for once without a rational explanation.

He carefully tucks the paper into his wallet for safekeeping.

More strange events unsettle Holden, forcing him to question his senses enough to burgle Karswell's house to find answers. A terrifying encounter with Grimalkin, the Karswell’s familiar and watch-cat, reinforces Holden's growing concern that he's dealing with things outside the scope of his understanding. Ignoring Karswell's suggestion to avoid the woods, Holden becomes more unraveled when the fire demon puts in a brief appearance. Through the use of diffused light, shadows, and increasingly unexplainable events, Holden is pushed more and more toward a realization he's still not fully willing to accept.

The turning point comes when Holden interviews a former cult member who, having survived Karswell's witchcraft by passing the runic-covered paper to his brother, is left in catatonic shock. While the scientific plausibility of the hypnotic session to awaken him is questionable, Tourneur's direction sums Holden's disquieting supernatural encounters into one riveting moment of desperate action. He learns enough to know he must return the paper to Karswell, but can he do it in time?

The final confrontation between Holden and Karswell, two men frightened and desperate—one anxious to return the paper, the other anxious to keep it from being returned—moves the film to its smoke-filled, demon demon, who's going to get the demon? denouement at a brisk pace.

Night of the Demon, while it has its faults (mostly due to budget), rises above them through its story of a rational, scientific man pitted against the inexplicable, and Tourneur's noir direction that transitions Holden's uncertainty to certainty in incremental encounters with an unknown that's gunning for him while we pray he wakes to the coming danger before it is too late.

Movie Review: Iron Man (2008) A Superhero with Heart

Zombos Says: Excellent

Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow make Iron Man more than the sum of the boilerplate screenplay by Mark Fergus, and the cover-the-basics villains and action directed by Jon Favreau. As Tony Stark, playboy billionaire (and former Long Island native), and Pepper Potts, his personal assistant handling his professional and personal affairs with equal efficiency--including his hubris-sized ego--both bring a twinkle-in-the-eye charm to this first tent-pole movie of the summertime box office season. And this tent-pole is made solid iron strong because of it.

From the opening salvo of Stark's bloody capture by terrorists, to his revelation his weapons of mass destruction actually kill more than the enemy, Downey keeps the balance of humor and drama in proper comic book movie perspective. While motivations and characters are measured in black and white to keep the action neatly moving, it 's Downey's cheeky delivery and attitude riffing against Paltrow's dry, no-nonsense, manner in between the slam-bam fisticuffs, and Stark's humorous outcomes when developing his suit of armor that delights more than the expected rousing rock music score and flashy explosions; but those are not too shabby either.

Between the exploding tanks and humvees, and bullets ricocheting, his development of Iron Man's armor from early prototype to uber-gadgetized, mechanized, Jarvisized (a very personal and proper speaking computer net), and hot-rod red splashed alloy chick-magnet, the special effects kick in bigtime but still take a backseat to Downey's over-eager robotic helpers, his insistence on testing features not quite ready for prime time, and a chest implant keeping him alive, but glows like a Burger King sign and requires more upkeep than he can carry out alone. Ms. Potts rises to the occasion here, but sends him into cardiac arrest when she accidentally pulls the plug on this mini-power plant, which keeps the shrapnel scattered around his heart from moving any closer. It also powers the suit of armor, and provides the impetus for a mine-is-bigger confrontation between Iron Man and a very hostile corporate take over.

The movie stays true to the original comic book storyline, but updates it from Vietnam to Afghanistan. There's also S.H.I.E.L.D. For comic geeks (like myself) who grew up on a steady diet of the Avengers and Nick Fury's gadget-topian secret service, I'll only say you need to stay seated past the credits. A teaser shows the possibilities for the sequel, and they are Marvel-ous indeed. This beginning franchise is running on all thrusters, and if Downey and Paltrow stay the course, it will remain so.